John Calley
| John Calley | |
|---|---|
| Born |
John Nicholas Calley July 8, 1930 Jersey City, New Jersey, U.S. |
| Died | September 13, 2011 (aged 81) Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Occupation | American film studio executive, film producer |
| Spouse(s) |
Olga Schoberová (m. 1972–92) Sandra Hotz Lean Meg Tilly (m. 1995–2002) |
John Nicholas Calley (July 8, 1930 – September 13, 2011) was an American film studio executive and producer. He was quite influential during his years at Warner Bros. (where he worked from 1968 to 1981) and "produced a film a month, on average, including commercial successes like The Exorcist and Superman." During his seven years at Sony Pictures Entertainment starting in 1996, five of which he was chairman and chief executive, he was credited with "reinvigorat[ing]" that major film studio.
Together with Mike Nichols and Ismail Merchant, Calley produced 1993's The Remains of the Day, for which the trio received an Oscar nomination—Calley's only such Best Picture nomination.
A best picture nomination Calley potentially missed was when, as Sony's new head, he nixed the studio's backing of Terence Malick's 1998 film The Thin Red Line, reportedly because he thought Malick couldn't keep to the budget. (The film stayed on budget and received seven Academy Award nominations.)
He was honored with the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences at the inaugural Governors Awards ceremony on November 11, 2009. For the ceremony, Calley, unable to attend in person due to illness, recorded remarks that were projected on a giant video screen, remarks characterizing the life of a film studio executive and called "one of the night's more startling bits of honesty": "You're very unhappy for a long period of time. And you don’t experience joy. At the end you experience relief, if you’re lucky."
According to Mervyn LeRoy in his autobiography Mervyn LeRoy: Take One, Calley played a big role in LeRoy's exit of Warner Bros. when The Kinney Company acquired it. Calley notified LeRoy that due to a "change in corporate thinking", the studio was not going to support his effort in producing the story Thirteen Clocks. When LeRoy asked Calley about the promises that he had made before, Calley answered "We'll have to wait and see".
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